U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/903,283, filed on Jul. 29, 2004, discloses techniques for performing context-sensitive searches. According to one such technique, a “source” web page may be enhanced with user interface elements that, when activated, cause a search engine to provide search results that are directed to a particular topic to which at least a portion of the “source” web page pertains. For example, such user interface elements may be “Y!Q” elements, which now appear in many web pages all over the Internet. For additional information on “Y!Q” elements, the reader is encouraged to submit “Y!Q” as a query term to a search engine.
Because they may be strategically positioned in a web page in close proximity to the content about which the user would want to search for information, the user interface elements described above provide a convenient mechanism for context-sensitive searching. A user can presume that, if he initiates a search using a user interface element that is positioned in close proximity to a particular paragraph of text, then the search results obtained for the search will be constrained based on the topics to which the paragraph pertains.
Beneficially, these user interface elements allow a user to search for resources that are related to a topic of interest within a web page that the user is currently viewing, at the time in which the user's interest in that topic is piqued. The user can locate related resources without redirecting his browser to a search engine portal page and, sometimes, without even formulating or typing any search query terms. Thus, these user interface elements enable the delivery of relevant information to a user at the point of the user's inspiration or curiosity.
If the user has the right kind of toolbar plug-in installed on his computer and associated with his Internet browser application (e.g., Mozilla Firefox), then the user may right-click on a word displayed within a web page in order to view a pop-up interface that provides the user with several options. For example, if the user right-clicks on a link in the page, then the user's Internet browser application may present, to the user, a pop-up interface that gives the user options for e-mailing the link to a user-specified e-mail address, sending the link to a user-specified Instant Messenger identity, adding the link to a set of bookmarks for future reference, or performing a search for relevant documents using terms within the link text as query terms. These options relate to activities that are applicable to all links, regardless of what those links represent.
To date, when such a pop-up interface is displayed, the options presented in the pop-up interface are the same regardless of the content of the text on which the user right-clicked. The activities that the user can take relative to a link on which the user right-clicked are the same regardless of the text of that link or the kind of thing that such text represents. As a result, the activities that the user can take are typically limited to more general activities that are applicable to entities of all kinds. Unfortunately, when the activities that can be performed relative to a link are only those that are of a generally applicable nature (i.e., applicable to all links regardless of what those links represent), many specific activities that the user might want to take relative to the link cannot be offered as options in the pop-up interface, because such specific activities might not be applicable to all links.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.